How to use Vine and Instagram for organizational communications

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Video and images have taken over online and social communications. This social-visual communication is the fastest-growing trend online for at least the last three years. First Pinterest, then Instagram, then Vine and Tumblr have taken turns generating wild, dizzying rates of growth that made world-wide headlines.

And video and images have converged in a new format: the short, short video, the video that’s over before you’re ready for it to be over, telling your story, making your point, creating a buzz, in 15 seconds or 6 seconds or less.

Shel Holtz, in his interactive course, “How to use Vine and Instagram for organizational communications,” argues that internal communicators, PR people and marketers will either master this new form, or be swept aside by the tidal wave of pure visualization, the determination of everybody on the planet to make you laugh or buy or think by using images.

Social-visual communication tells a story, makes a case or changes minds. It does this in an astonishingly short time.

This is radically different from the ancestor of mini-videos, GIFs of the earliest Internet days. GIFs are little looping pieces of simple, even crude animation. They illustrate a theme in the story text. That’s all they do. But Vine and Instagram are the offspring of GIFs, and they have visual interest, narrative thread and detail to tell a real story

In his interactive module, Shel shows you how Vine and Instagram differ in look and application. He shows you tricks to use on both platforms.

You won’t get a formula for instant Vine or Instagram success. That formula doesn’t exist. Both mediums are so new that the “rules” are still being worked out.

But Shel also doesn’t just tell you to “be creative.” When you work in a medium with no rules, you must be creative or you have nothing.

Instead Shel shows you how the corporate masters of the short video story—Dunkin’ Donuts, GE, Starbucks, Walgreen’s—go about making the world’s most effective mini-videos.

The heart of Shel’s module is “The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Instagram and Vine Videos” section. Using nothing more than your iPhone, you can create content for your organization or employees in four steps and within a few seconds you’ll get likes, shares, comments, tweets and re-tweets—maybe around the world.

Shel lists the six communications applications for Vine and Instagram videos:

Other corporate mini-video masterpieces from Dorritos and Lowe’s reveal how wit and humor (Dorritos’ mariachi band) and the 6-second home-handyman tip (Lowe’s) triumph over consumer indifference and sales resistance (and maybe go viral on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Vine, and several other social platforms).

Burberry’s, the fashion company, gave viewers an overview of an international fashion show in its 15-second Instagram video. GE uses Instagram to drive home the point that it makes gigantic engines that move tens of millions of travelers between nations and continents safely.

To repeat: Shel’s point is: On Vine and Instagram, there are no rules. Your imagination and daring, your wit, count for everything. Execution is still important, but visual unconventionality, brevity, lightness of touch and risk-taking are more important still.

Bonus: Holtz shows you infographics of Vine and Instagram measurement analytics. You get all this, plus Shel’s largely untapped reservoir of PR, marketing, and communication ideas on Vine and Instagram.

Here’s the question: Do you want to learn these career-extending concepts and practices thoroughly now, at your leisure, or do you want to cram-study them, maybe to keep your job, two or three years from now?